Carpenters, home-improvement enthusiasts and others that perform work in the construction and building arena traditionally use measuring tape to determine the lengths of boards, sheet roc, sheet metals or any other type of material that needs to be measured and then cut to a needed size. Unfortunately, the use of a standard measuring tape requires the user to: 1. hold the tape with one or both hands, 2. carefully visually inspect the length found on the measuring tape and 3. adjust the length on the tape until the desired length is found. After finding the desired length on the measuring tape, the user then typically needs to mark the surface of the material where the desired length is located. This second, marking step, normally requires that the user free one hand to grab the right type of marking tool while holding the measuring tape in the other hand, or getting a second person to assist the user. Next, once the desired length has been found and marked on the material, a cutting tool must be grabbed by the user and finally the desired cut in the material can be made.
This process is often substantially repeated several times for one simple piece of material to be cut. This leads to a far more cumbersome and time consuming process then is necessary including the need to switch between tools to simply measure and cut at a desired length.
Some innovations in the prior art have attempted to improve on this inefficient process but introducing measuring tape devices that possess the ability to mark where cuts are to be made. This still, however, requires that a user must then grab and utilize a separate cutting tool. Further, all such attempts maintain the standard measuring tape design, which is relatively bulky, ergonomically unfriendly to the human hand and wasteful of materials.
What is needed is measuring and cutting device that can easily and accurately inform the user the distance that is currently being measured allowing users to have a single tool that allows them to make their cuts and measure their lengths, while being ergonomically friendly. The present invention provides a solution to these shortcomings.